Our
Saviour's prophetic words, "For the poor you have always with you"
(<St. Mark> xiv. 7), have often been forcibly brought home to each
succeeding generation by scenes and incidents, many of them not wanting the
element of the dramatic. The poor, as the chief of the material treasures of the
Church—a similitude which so enraged the Prefect of pagan Rome under Valerian
against St. Lawrence—is one of these, and all through the ages the work of
aiding and consoling the needy, has been regarded as one of the noblest of the
deeds of mercy, as it is, doubtless, one of the most picturesque. The presence
of poor people in such numbers in Catholic Churches has long been remarked, and,
indeed, their permanent absence would make many of the better-off section of the
congregation think that there was something wrong. Their presence is a constant
reminder of the divine prophecy referred to, and also of that second statement
from the same holy source: "The poor have the Gospel preached unto
them" (<St. Matt.> xi. 5). It is most fitting, therefore, that this
never-ending evidence of our poor mendicant brethren, as such, should be
represented among the canonized Saints of the Church. Of course, all the Saints
practiced poverty in spirit, but in St. Benedict Joseph Labre, whom we are now
about to consider, we have a concrete representative of the poor who
traditionally crowd the entrances of the churches, and upon whom the alms of the
charitable are bestowed.

Like so many of those who have been raised to the altar in the last two
centuries, St. Benedict Joseph was French. He was born at Amettes near Boulogne,
26th March, 1748, being the eldest of fifteen children of Jean Baptist Labre, a
small shopkeeper, and his wife, Anne Grandsire.

Young Benedict Joseph, like the rest of his brothers and sisters, probably
received the rudiments of his education partly at home and partly at the parish
school, one of the thousands of excellent parochial schools which made the
France of Pre-Revolution days perhaps the best instructed country in the world.
As a boy, Benedict Joseph, though very amiable, was already remarkable for
seriousness of character. He practiced to an eminent degree those habits of
self-restraint, which ascetical writers term "mortification "—that
constant repression of the lower man which is the almost certain presage of a
life of distinguished sanctity. Joined to this was a great horror of all that
was positively wrong or whatever led up to it. As all this pointed to a probable
religious vocation, young Labre was sent at the age of twelve to commence
classical study under his paternal uncle, the Abbe Francis Joseph Labre, who was
Cure, or parish priest of Erin. It has been represented in some quarters that
Benedict Joseph was little better than a devout dolt, who was simply incapable
of acquiring higher instruction. This is entirely incorrect. The future
pilgrim-saint was both a diligent and intelligent student, and his Latin
reading, after the elements of the grammar were mastered, embraced the
well-known "Historia Sacra" and the usual "Excerpta" from
the various classical authors read, then as now, in schools. To this was added a
course of history, the ancient portion, no doubt, from Rollin's famous work
which, in the original or translations, taught the annals of Greece and Rome to
half the world; including Frederick the Great. But though no dunce, Benedict
Joseph was no lover of mere learning as such. A close reader all his life of the
<Imitation of Christ>, he had even at this early stage learned thoroughly
the meaning of such passages as, "Woe to them who inquire of men after;
many curious things; and are little curious of the way to serve Me!" (Bk.
iii., ch. 43). His yearning for solitude, ardent love of austerity, and habitual
union with God, made the hours spent in the acquisition of purely secular
knowledge appear a sheer waste of both time and opportunity. Joined to this
desire for austere personal holiness, was also an abounding charity for his
neighbour's spiritual and temporal welfare. He assisted his uncle, as far as he
was competent to do so, in the work of the parish, teaching the children their
Catechism, reading to the sick and diffusing throughout the peasant families of
the place that "atmosphere" of the Faith which is so powerful a
preservative of religion. The people loved and venerated the holy youth, and the
Princess de Croy—member of one of the most illustrious families of
Pre-Revolution France—used to style him, "Mon petit Cure." Young
Labre's zeal was conspicuously shown during the plague that devastated Erin and
district, and when his uncle, the Abbe Labre, died, a martyr of charity during
the infection, the nephew went to live with another uncle, the Abbe Vincent.
This holy priest, whose life resembled that of the St. Cure d'Ars in the
succeeding century, was a man after Benedict Joseph's own heart. The pair shared
a miserable living-room and the roughest fare, giving all that was best in the
matter of food and drink to the poor. Meanwhile, our Saint was reaching man's
estate, and it was necessary for him to decide upon some vocation, either the
cloister or the secular priesthood. His own predilection had been the severe
Order of La Trappe, but in deference to the wishes of his parents, who feared
that such a rigorous rule would prove too hard for their somewhat delicate son,
he chose the Carthusians, but without success. He then applied to the Trappists
at Neuville, and was told to study logic and plain chant before seeking for
admission. This he did with but small progress, but in spite of this, was, after
the prescribed period, accepted as a novice together with a friend. Benedict
Joseph performed all the obligations of his new "life" with the
greatest exactitude, but the growth of scruples and the increasing manifestation
of a certain want of fitness for regular religious life, convinced his superiors
that he had no vocation, and be left the monastery where he was already regarded
as "a saint," though of a different type of sanctity from that laid
down by the rule of La Trappe.

It is just at this period of Benedict Joseph Labre's extraordinary career,
that those who aspire to write his biography, however brief and imperfect, find
themselves confronted by the greatest difficulties in the matter of accounting
for the almost unique phenomenon afforded by his subsequent life. Here was a
young man of astonishing holiness, having no suitability for secular pursuits of
any sort, yet not adapted, apparently, for either the priesthood, or any of the
religious orders. "The Spirit," however, "breatheth where He
will" (<St. John> iii. 8), and, doubtless, even before be got his
kindly demission from La Trappe, Labre's choice was irrevocably made. The race
of "vagrom men" is not habitually regarded over here with general
favour, though, be it remembered, it is the so-called Reformation that has
chiefly impressed the traditional dark stigma on the wandering class. The poor
and unfortunate, so ruthlessly cast into abject wretchedness by the loss of the
ever-friendly Abbeys and Priories, were naturally viewed by the greedy, upstart
robbers of the monastic lands as a constant reminder of their own villainy, and
of the awful social misery it had entailed. Hence, the genial laws of the
whipping-post, fetters and branding irons of Edward VI's time, and the only few
degrees milder enactments of later reigns. But over a large part of the
Continent, at least, until the time of the Revolution, the needy wayfarer was
generally considered as a representative of "God's poor," to be helped
and comforted as dear Oliver Goldsmith found in his romantic, penniless
journeyings through France and Italy, 1754-56. So Benedict Joseph's resolution
was to become a " tramp," not as a means of lazy, aimless wandering
and low self-indulgence, but to travel on foot from shrine to shrine as a
pilgrim of eternity, edifying the devout by his piety, and shaming the selfish
and luxurious by his constant and wonderful humility and mortifications. For
some eight years (1770-1778?) this extraordinary rover in the cause of religion,
traversed most of South-west Europe. His first visits were to Loretto and Rome,
and he made it his custom to visit "beautiful Rome;" as he called the
Eternal City, every year. It was at the Church of St. Romuald at Fabriano that
Benedict Joseph returned to the doubtless, astonished Sacristan half the dole
given him, with the words: 'It is too much! Poor people ought to live by the
alms they procure daily!" This was his invariable rule, and when some
charitable gift exceeded, as he thought, what was necessary for his own slender
wants, he always gave the greater part of it to someone whom he considered worse
off than himself. In such estimation did this wholly remarkable pilgrim come to
be held that the people of the various towns and localities periodically visited
by him, looked for his return as a much expected annual event. At Bari, the
townsfolk rose up against a graceless fellow who insulted "their
pilgrim," and at Compostella, equal respect was shown to the "pelegrino
santo." Labre did not fail to visit "Paray-le-Monial," already
famous as the cradle of the more modern devotion to the Sacred Heart, and the
Chapel where St. Margaret Mary had received her consoling visions and messages,
soon ranked in his regard with Loretto, Assisi, and other sacred shrines. It was
probably while journeying on one occasion to Paray that St. Benedict Joseph was
entertained at a farmhouse near Lyons, by a certain worthy farmer, Matthieu
Vianney, and Marie Baluze, his wife, and in the room of the house where the holy
wanderer passed the night, the future St. Cute d'Ars was born, 8th May, 1786,
some three years after Benedict Joseph had passed to his reward.

But if the Saint had his earthly consolation in the shape of much kindness
and respect, he had, of course, his trials. The life he had chosen with its
constant exposure to the elements, its hunger and thirst and weariness, was all
a form of the "cross" to be daily reckoned with, and to these were
added occasionally the sufferings arising from men. At Moulins, in France, he
was imprisoned for a while under suspicion of a share in a robbery that had
occurred in the district, and then his half-ragged and generally odd appearance
often exposed him to both ridicule and even ill-usage. He usually wore what had
once been a Trappist's habit, but which, in time, became a mere "thing of
shreds and patches," and to this was added an old cloak and girdle. A
rosary around his neck, and a wallet containing a few necessaries and some
books, such as the <Breviary> and the <Imitation of Christ>,
completed the bizarre outfit of this strange-looking traveller. His Chinese-like
features, tall emaciated frame, and long delicate hands, were remarkable. But
jibe and jeer, or even praise were lost on one who lived in a continual union
with God, and whose haunting fear seems to have been that he might not be
included among the "fewness of the elect."1

About 1778, Benedict Joseph went to live permanently in Rome, then under the
beneficent rule of the large-hearted and splendid-looking Pius VI. The Romans,
while praising the museums and admiring the superb collections of medals and
antiquities therein-all owing to the antiquarian zeal and public spirit of the
Pope-were grumbling much at the increase of taxation, owing to the cost of these
and also the draining of a large part of the Pontine Marshes, then in progress.
"Money, the Dead, and Cardinals" are proverbially objects of affection
or admiration with the Italians. Touch any of these and a social sirocco is
almost certain to arise. But Benedict Joseph took little account of the then
simmering discontent in the Alma Urbs, which "every intelligent
foreigner" found so full of contradictions—magnificent churches, stately
plazzos, tortuous streets, gay colours, and squalid rags. Benedict Joseph,
however, must have found himself quite at home among the scores of beggars, whom
artists thought so "Salvator Rosa "-like, and whom economists rated as
so incurably idle. Most visitors to Rome during the eighteenth century were also
puzzled at the paradox presented by the great dislike of the fashionable classes
for <odori>, even choice scents such as attar of roses and lavender-water,
and their apparent indifference to the sickening stenches from open sewers,
which, not infrequently, disturbed the Rousseau-like reveries of northern
sentimentalists amidst the classic and ecclesiastic grandeurs and memories of
the then Garden City!2 These shocks to the olfactory nerves of the Quality,
however, were used by our Saint as an additional form of penance, so completely
dead was he by this time to every kind of personal gratification. He was
assiduous in visiting the churches, and never missed any of the great functions
and feasts. During the Holy Week of 1779, he might have noticed in the Church of
Sancta Maria in Trastevere, an elderly, but distinguished-looking, personage
dressed in black, with the "George" and Ribbon of the Garter, deep in
devotion before the Madonna de Strada. The attendant <Cavalieri>, or the
whisperings of the migratory congregation, would have informed him that it was
<Il Re>—none other than the titular Charles III of Great Britain and
Ireland, but whom his own "subjects" styled <Il Prentendente!>
In the course of the last years of his life in Rome, Benedict Joseph lodged in
various humble abodes, now in a cellar near the Quirinal, then by the ruins of
the Colosseum—where Gibbon heard the distant chanting of the Friars while
musing on the glory that was Rome's and finally and permanently, as an inmate of
the Saint Martin's Night Shelter. Though "sleeping out" is a very
different experience in Italy from what it is in our cold, variable climate, no
doubt, even the most ascetic of us likes to think that this weary, worn
sojourner among many men and cities found a more or less homelike shelter at
last. It was fitting, however, that one whose whole life almost was spent in
visiting shrines and churches should have been seized with his last illness in
the Church of Santa Maria in Monte while hearing Mass there on the Wednesday of
Holy Week, 1783. He was removed to the house of a butcher, named Francesco
Zaccarelli, who had been very kind to the wonderful Frenchman, and in the abode
of this obscure tradesman, in the Via dei Serpenti, the soul of Benedict Joseph
Labre passed to its reward. The marvellous career of the celebrated pilgrim was
already familiar to all Romans, and on Holy Thursday vast crowds attended the
remains of the deceased, as arrayed in the habit of the Carmelite Confraternity
of St. Martino, these were conducted to the Church of the Madonna de Monte,
there to lie in almost regal state. Cardinals, princes, bishops, priests,
religious and lay persons of every rank thronged the Church to gaze upon
"II Santo," and implore his intercession. On the eve of Holy Saturday,
the body, enclosed in two coffins, was interred beneath the high altar. At the
requiem that day, Latin eulogies of the wonderful mendicant were pronounced by
Fr. Mariani and a certain Doctor del Pino. The title Venerable was conferred on
Benedict Joseph by Pius VI, 18th February 1794, and probably nothing but the
French invasion of Rome and the long revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars prevented
his speedy beatification. That was pronounced by Pius IX, who had a great
devotion to the holy wanderer, on the 20th May, 1860. It was reserved for Leo
XIII, who represented so much that was great and striking in Catholic erudition
and philosophy, and who ever showed himself the true champion and friend of the
proletariat, to pronounce the Canonization of this humble soul, whose surprising
love of God had found so unique and curious an expression. This crowning event
in the history of the Saint took place, 8th December, 1881, on the Feast of the
Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, whose devout client he had been during the
years of prayer and pilgrimage that were only to end with entry into the true
home of all the just.

[<Lives> of St. Benedict Joseph Labre began to appear very shortly
after his death. That by Marconi, his confessor, published in 1785, records some
136 miracles alleged to have been wrought through the Saint's intercession. Most
of these relate to bodily cures. An English edition of this biography is said to
have materially helped in the conversion of the Rev. John Thayer (1755-1815, the
holy, but somewhat erratic, American missionary priest. There is a good sketch
of the Saint by the Rev. Arthur Little, S.J., in the <Irish Messenger>
Series (Dublin, 1921). Many curious but, no doubt, authentic details are also
given in a very hostile account of St. Benedict Joseph, contained in the
anti-clerical work, <Rome: Its Princes, Priests and People,> vol. ii., by
Fanny MacLaughlin. (London: Elliot Stock, 1885.).]

Endnotes

1 Among the books read by the Saint as a boy, was an apparently gloomy
treatise by Pere Aveugle, on the difficulties of Salvation, which work, no
doubt, exactly suited the spiritual pessimism of the time and the prevailing
Jansenism which so largely caused it. Such books, however, while not for all,
have their merit. in drawing serious attention to a subject of paramount
importance, and, in any case, Fr. Aveugle's dissertation helped to shape the
career of our extraordinary Saint.